The Boundary Lands

3.1 Into the Feywild

The party makes their way safely back to Verind’s Edge, where Missyus thanks the party again for their help and departs for a temple within the city to arrange transport for herself. Word begins to spread throughout the city of the party’s exploits in saving the village of Ramshead, and the party’s popularity grows. They are now regularly recognized in the streets and strangers seem to know their names. Thanks to their growing popularity, Emperor Essran invites them to attend a dinner party he is throwing for visiting nobles and merchants. The party cleans themselves up a bit and attends the fancy bash at the Emperor’s palace.

Erik’s Infamous Exploits

The party enjoys themselves at the dinner party, partaking in the free mead, wine, and food with reckless abandon. They run into Mujeh, the Goliath bard, at the party who updates them on a task they had given him. He followed up with sages in the city of Arastur in Quinalyn about the Arinfax Colossus. The sages could find very little in their libraries, but did pass along one reference to the legendary creature they found in a centuries old text:

2.2 Mmmm... Brains...

The party heads back to the inn where they can hear the villagers have regrouped. They burst inside to find Igris dead. Raver stands over her body with a bloody knife in hand, shouting about how “this was necessary”. The party decides they have their own “necessary” murder to undertake now and immediately moves to chop Raver into numerous small bits, led by an exceptionally angry Fargrim. Unfortunately, the villagers aren’t eager for more bloodshed and a mob intervenes between the party and Raver. Rather than chop down innocent villagers to get to Raver, the party puts off their vengeance for now. An older man gets onto a table and commands silence. The villagers seem to defer to him and the party hears a few cries of “let the Elder speak!”. The Elder calls for order and insists that the village cannot lose its sanity in such trying times. He claims he will stand in as the voice of the town while Mayor York is away.

2.1 A Mystery

The party makes their way out of the goblin cave complex, with the Raven Queen statue in hand. They debate whether this powerful evil artifact should be handed over to Lord Dread, and consider the possibility that Davos may be more interested in the statue than in information on the Arinfax Colossus. So, they decide to return the statue to Davos and just ask him if he really wants them to hand the statue over to Lord Dread. The party reaches the surface to find their horses have been slaughtered by some wandering beast of the Torin Plains, so they start the long trek home on foot.

A Charmed Meeting

Just a day or two into their travels, the party runs into another civilized humanoid out in the wilds of the Torin Plains. Charm, a tiefling blade-for-hire, has been picking up work here and there around the Boundary Lands for several years. She’s often been hired by nobles in the area, and by the Empire of Nerath, to handle… discrete… tasks that require some specialized expertise. Charm has made a comfortable living working independently, but she’s recently begun to grow tired of the lonely freelancer lifestyle. She’s gotten some steady work in Verind’s Edge and has been hanging around the city for some time now. Consequently, she’s had several run-ins with Fargrim, and the two have developed a gruff love-hate relationship.

1.3 In which the party crawls through a dungeon

Part the First, In which the party terrifies a group of cowardly goblins

The party eventually tracks the goblins back to a cave that appears to be their home. They debate how they should approach the cave, considering a stealthy entrance, but then realize that none of them are remotely capable at being stealthy. Nonetheless, the party circles around to approach the cave from the side and gives it their best shot at being quiet. As the party nears the cave entrance a small goblin head pokes out and looks at them. Its eyes widen in surprise and the goblin runs back into the cave. Erik and Invicto try to leap into the cave mouth to blast the goblin with an arcane spell before it gets away but they aren’t quick enough as the goblin disappears around a corner.

The cave entrance is a wide curving corridor that eventually opens into a larger cavern. The party follows the cave around and find a force of goblins awaiting them in the cavern – eight goblin cutters, four goblin javelin throwers, and two vicious-looking hunting cats. The creatures look poised to attack, but Invicto calls out in his most intimidating voice, “Wait! Put down your weapons and you don’t have to die!”

1.2 A Dreadful Meeting

The party gathers their spoils from the slain kobolds and proceeds uneventfully to Lord Dread’s keep. A few days later, as the day turns to evening, they break through a treeline onto the rim of a shallow valley where Lord Dread’s keep teeters on the edge of a cliff. A light fog rolls through the valley, obscuring the ground around the keep.

Welcoming Party

As the party enters the valley, they come across numerous tombstones scattered about the valley floor. The fog begins to thicken until the party has trouble seeing more than a few feet in any direction. The party hears strange whispers and movement around them. The Zaza and Fargrim pick out at least three humanoid shapes moving towards them from opposite directions. The Zaza calls out that they simply wish to pass through to the keep and a voice asks that they “speak the phrase”. The party has no answer to that request and the creatures emerge from the fog to attack – two skeletal warriors, a zombie, and a wraith. The Zaza moves to engage one of the skeletons and the wraith on one side of the battlefield while Fargrim takes on the other skeleton and the zombie. The wraith proves an intimidating foe as its shadowy touch quickly weakens The Zaza while its ghostly form shrugs off most attacks that strike it. With the skeleton striking her as well, The Zaza is quickly bloodied; though, drawing on her own Divine Mettle, she is able to at least remove the effects of the wraith’s weakening touch.

In the Service of the Emperor

The party has been in the service of the Empire of Nerath in the city of Verind’s Edge for some time. The party has gravitated toward each other and forged a friendship, not only because they get along with each other well in their own peculiar ways, but also because they have recognized the potential in each other to excel far above the average soldier or officer in the Empire of Nerath.

The party put their exceptional talents to the test recently – the nearby fiefdom of Uthrin has been squabbling with Verind’s Edge and has claimed that some of the new villages that have sprung up to the east of Verind’s Edge (between the city and the rest of the Boundary Lands) lie in Uthrin territory, and hence owe taxes to Sir Uthrin. Uthrin’s soldiers threatened some of these villagers with imprisonment if they did not deliver, and when the soldiers came to make good on that threat the party was there to welcome them, along with a few other soldiers from Verind’s Edge. The party members were the only survivors of the fight, successfully fending off the Uthrin soldiers. Some recognition followed this deed, and as a reward for being the sole survivors of the battle, the party was invited to attend a grand dinner with Emperor Essran himself. The dinner was part of the celebration of First Knight Thalus’s slaying of the Arinfax Colossus.

The party finds themselves back in the city of Verind’s Edge enjoying the celebration, taking in the parades, and knocking back a few drinks before their dinner party.

The party consists of:

Erik (Human Wizard) - Erik was raised amongst elves by a wealthy elven merchant in the great forest kingdom of Quinalyn. His brother, Luwin (his father’s son by blood), grew jealous of Erik’s developing arcane talents

1.1 A Celebration

Fargrim, The Zaza, Erik, and Invicto are in Verind’s Edge, taking in the celebration festivities for the slaying of the Arinfax Colossus, when they catch a street ruffian, a boy of no more than 10 or 12 years, attempting to pick the pocket of Fargrim. Fargrim grabs the boy and suggests some severe punishments, but in the end shows his graciousness by letting the ruffian go freely if he promises to gather up a round of drinks for the party. He gives the boy a few coppers to purchase the drinks and sends him off. Of course, the boy never returns. The party returns to taking in the festivities, including watching the severed head of the great dragon, the Arinfax Colossus, as it is paraded through the streets.

Dinner with the Emperor

The party then attends the grand dinner with Emperor Essran where they are regaled with the full tale from Sir Thalus of his slaying of the great Arinfax Colossus. Fargrim suspects the beast was truly a two-headed dragon and that only one of its heads was removed, leaving the beast alive and well and destined to soon romp through the civilized lands leaving death and destruction in its wake. Sir Thalus embellishes his tale quite thoroughly, describing in great detail all of his magnificent exploits as he battled with the beast, and making little mention of the troop of soldiers who journeyed with him to fight the great dragon.